


Wrapped in Steel Wool

by AZlegends



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Help, Male SS mentioned, One Shot, Other, secret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 07:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6795373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AZlegends/pseuds/AZlegends
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quinn has a secret she has been carrying for a long time, Nick Valentine maybe the only one she can trust with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wrapped in Steel Wool

The sun’s reflection was just glancing off a broken plain of glass still hanging desperately to the frame of a shop window.   Quinn caught a glimpse of her dark eyes in its reflection. She didn’t realize how tired she was. They were supposed to make it back to Diamond city tonight but she could already feel the grip of the sand man trying to hold her back with every step.  She needed to get a Brahmin hooked up to a cart or something, these long treks from Sanctuary to Diamond city were starting to wear at her and even though she wasn’t that old-

            Well scratch that she was old, two hundred plus years old.

She had been asleep for most of that time in cryostasis.  So she usually never counted it as her actual age, but on days like today. She wondered if maybe she hadn’t been so well kept in those cryopods. Maybe there had been a glitch in hers like there had been in the others.  She wondered if this tiredness she felt now was a symptom of some condition brought from the stasis. She shook the idea away. She knew exactly why she hadn’t been feeling well she just didn’t want to believe it.

“Something the matter?”

She hadn’t realized she had stopped to take some deep breaths, while watching the sun fall further into the horizon.  Nick stood beside her, smoking a cigarette. His glowing yellow eyes flickered to her and then to the road ahead.  His features never displayed much in the way of emotion  but his voice did, she caught the slow drag of his words and the close movement of his body. He was worried.

God she did not need that.

“No, let’s move.”

She pushed by him and continued down the torn up Boston street. Her footing becoming sloppy as the last ray of sunlight vanished from the city street and plunged it into darkness. She turned her pip-boy light on and trekked over to a large pile of rubble.

“Doll I think we should find some place to hold out for the night.” Nick remarked as he watched her kick away some dirt to give her better footing on the hill.

“No we got to get to Diamond city! Marlow is only going to be there tomorrow,” She stumbled slipping on some loose rocks. She pulled herself up from them and continued, “-and if we miss him we lose our lead on Quest.”

“You don’t need to kill yourself for the man.” He put a hand around her, She let him help her up the pile, “Besides the gal said he’d be there all day. We can still catch him later. You need rest.”

“I’m fine.” She smiled, feeling her breath beginning to burn in her chest. She grabbed a quick burst of energy to leap the remaining steps to the top, “See.”

“Yeah and that wheezing is some other guy, right?” He chuckled.

“That’s just ‘cause of the hill, I’m completely ready to finish this tonight!” She marched, But it was too late; she could feel the strength in her legs leave her and she fell to her knees wheezing. She curled over feeling her hands draw into fists as a coughing fit began. She could feel her rib cage rattle with each gasp of air.  

Between breaths she spat out, “Just a minute.”

Nick knelt down beside her.

“There is an old theater just around the corner. We can hide out there for the night. ” He put an arm around her shoulders and patted them.

She could only accept it as the coughing continued.

He guided her down the hill and around the ruins of a clothing store. The theater was a old building, done up in an early art deco style. Fine strips of brass patterns covered the dark stone work, straight and sharp like the time it came from.  The outside was pretty well kept, surprisingly so.

“You sure it’s safe?”  She asked her gaze drifting up.

“Yeah.”

“This looks like the perfect place for some punk ass raiders to set up a base.”

“Well institute synths like to use it.”

“Oh ,Well then that explains it.”  She didn’t want to dwell too much on the thought of the institute.  Too many bad memories. Too many regrets. She swallowed.

Nick ushered her inside and pushed the door shut behind them before sealing it with a chain from a molding velvet fence.  

The interior of theater looked just as well as the outside did. Seemed the blast from the nuclear bomb did minimal damage to the place, just tossed around some furniture and broke all the glass in the room.  It was almost haunting how well kept the building was on the inside.  She spotted a concession stand and an old Nuka-Cola vending machine next to a cigarette dispenser and a popcorn machine. The ancient memory of buttery-salted popcorn made her lips water, she licked them and then stumbled up to the machine. On closer inspection she noted it was still in pretty good shape. The plug was frayed but that could be replace.

“We gotta come back here.”  She licked her lips again remembering its savory salted scent.

“Sure thing, it’s not like this things going anywhere.”  Nick pulled out his pistol and stepped over to an elevator at the end of a short hall before nodding his head up, “The actual theater is upstairs.”

Quinn nodded. She reached for her sword but quickly decided against it in her current state. She squinted, her eyelids hurt from being up for so long.  She reached for a  10mm she kept around her thigh and wobbled over to Nick.

“Maybe you should wait down here?”

“No I got this.” She said stubbornly as she rammed her finger into the up button of the elevator.

The doors shut in front of them before the elevator began to rise.

“You know Quinn, you aren’t as agile as you were when you first came to-”

“ I am not old!”

“Well two hundred-”

“I was asleep for most of that I don’t count it.” She huffed, her dark eyes locked to his, “ I’m young and full of energy! I’m ready to conquer the wasteland!”

“Whoa there Caeser.” He snickered and patted her on the back, “ You’re only human. It’s okay to take a break once and a while.”

She clenched her fist. A ‘break’ is what got her husband killed. A ‘break’ is what left her frozen in cryo for sixty years while her own child grew up with strangers.

She sighed. Why was she fighting so hard? It wasn’t like there was anything left for her in the Commonwealth. It had crossed her mind several times to just go back to vault 111 and return to her cryo pod. Maybe in two hundred more years there would be running water again and electricity.  She smiled, maybe even a comfy bed.

The elevator dinged open to a red wall, papered with floral patterns. A print she had found to be tacky even back when.

Nick stepped out first his coat billowing out behind him and he slipped quickly across the short hall. She followed close behind.

The hall lead directly into the theater. Unlike the floor below the theater had a lot of damage. Part of the roof caved in, in the center destroying many of the seats. A dim light from the stars outside filtered in lighting up some grains of dust on the still air.  

The theater smelled kind of moist and moldy, but for the most part seemed pretty okay. Some lights still lit up the shallow stage on the other side of the mound of shingles.  Several mannequins stood front and center on it wearing a wide variety of costumes. Beside that the floor was empty of people except for a skeleton which sat in one of the seats close to the stage. With his weight gone the seat had flipped up and trapped his pelvic bone to the chair.

Quinn watched Nick approach the stage and take a cap off one of the mannequins. It was the white cap of a sailor hat. He took off his fedora and placed it on that mannequin while his fixed the sailor cap in place on his head. He then took a pipe from the mannequin and squinted an eye.

“Well blow me down!  Olive Oyl, why don’t yous take a seat.”

Quinn smiled and flicked a strand of hair from her eyes before tucking the 10mm away on her leg. She approached him and walked by to another mannequin and stripped it of a silvery sequined dress with a plumed headband.  She threw her own hat off and put on the headband, but only held the dress out in front of her.

“But darling what about the ball?”  She feigned the look of despair.

Nick put a hand under her chin, his other pulling the sailor cap from his naked head, “ Another day doll, today I want to spend with you.”

For a moment she could see herself far away from here. In a home she no longer called a home; Another man had said those words. Another man had held her chin.

For a moment everything that had happen in the last few months came back to her and all she could do was cry.

She dropped the dress and buried her head into Nick’s chest.

She felt his hand holding her head close and between her sobs she could hear him encourage her.

“It’s all right doll. Just let it all out.”  he patted her head.

She tried to say something coherent between her sobs, but all that came out was a jumbled mess.

Nick guided Quinn to a dry patch of flooring and wrapped her in his coat while he put together a small fire.

It was between him setting up the wood from broken seats, and lighting it on fire that her tears had dried and left her red eyed.  She didn’t even watch as he took a seat beside her. She slumped sideways into his shoulder. They sat in silence for some time.

“You going to tell me what’s eating you kid?”  He asked staring down at her.

It took her sometime to answer.

“ I’m pregnant,” she began, the words felt hollow and distant. Like they were meant for another time and another place, “it’s Nate’s. But I never got to tell him ,Nick.” She was beginning to feel the sobs again.

“ I knew before the bombs fell. Just that morning. I was going to surprise him after the veterans hall with the news. He was going to be so happy. He was already loving being a father and now we were going to have another.  I could already see that stupid big grin on his face.” She smiled briefly, remembering his big warm eyes the day Shaun was born. His soft lips as he kissed her, and told her she was beautiful, even though she was covered with sweat and red faced from the whole ordeal.

“Then the bombs fell,” She stated, she tried to choke back any more emotion. Trying to keep from breaking any more as the words tumbled from her lips, and her mind raced through the memories, “-and we ran with Shaun to the shelter. Everything was falling apart, I decided to keep it to myself. Told myself I’d tell him once we were settled in but that never happened.  Shaun was crying I remember, wailing. I remember telling Nate it would be okay we were just getting decontaminated. It would only take a m-moment. B-But then those bastards tricked us into those ice boxes.

I should have told them I loved them. I should have kissed them, I should have been the one holding Shaun. I should have tried harder to breakout from the cryo-chamber!

A-and now they’re gone.”  She wrapped her fist into his coat sleeve trying to dull the pain in her chest, “I’m a terrible mother Nick. I’m alone and For fucks sake how can I even bring a child into this world?”

“Hey, hey, You’re a fine mother,“ he smiled, before pulling her close and wrapping her tight with his jacket. “Since getting out of that vault you have had a one track mind to find Shaun. It’s not your fault some pre-war-looneys decided to trick you in that vault. Nothing about what’s happened to you has been your fault.”

She buried her head into his chest,

“I think you’re going to do just fine doll. And Hey! You’re not alone. You got good old Detective Valentine at your services” He smiled, a small warm grin. It was enough to smother her sobs into sniffles.  
  
****Nick ran his metal hand through her hair gently, listening to her broken breaths, till they eased into snores and longer still; till the stars melted and the sun’s orange glow warmed the room.  
  
**END**

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this on tumblr but thought here was a better spot for it. I don't think I'll write anymore of this as I think this story was just a one shot. Maybe if people like their relationship I may write another tale with them.


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